Wartime Zapad 2025 Exercise: Russia's Strategic Adaptation and NATO

Zapad 2025 is the 2025 iteration of Russia's joint strategic exercise with Belarus, represents a critical inflection point in the evolution of Russian military strategy and force development. Unlike its previous iterations, which showcased overt demonstrations of military mass and tempo, Zapad 2025 appears as a meticulously calibrated, scaled-down, and geographically-constrained exercise. This is a deliberate and rational adaptation to the immense human and material costs of the ongoing large-scale war in Ukraine and the persistent strain of international sanctions.

The exercise worked as a multi-layered instrument of a state in war time, even though not fully mobilised. Politically, it fostered a perception of ‘resolve continuity’ to both domestic and international audiences, strengthening the Russian-Belarusian closeness and deploying calibrated, low-resource deterrent messaging. Militarily, it worked as a field laboratory where Russia stress-tested and refined its ‘Initial Period of War’ (IPW) playbook, incorporating direct lessons from the Ukrainian battlefield. The focus this time was on high-leverage capabilities, such as long-range precision fires, integrated air and missile defence (IAMD), and electronic warfare (EW), while conserving mass and materiel that are critically needed in Ukraine. This focus directly reflects the frictions and vulnerabilities exposed in the conflict, including brittle command and control, logistical fragilities, and an industrial base strained by sanctions.

Zapad 2025 in Russia's War-Era Strategy

The Zapad (West) strategic exercise cycle has historically been a premier political-military platform for Russia, signalling its readiness, demonstrating compellence, and managing its alliance with Belarus. Since its post-Soviet revival in 1999, the cycle has evolved through notable iterations in 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021, each serving as a key data-point for observers assessing the Kremlin's strategic intent. Observing the Zapad gives a neat picture of the general Russian posture. The 2025 iteration unfolded under unprecedented circumstances. Russia is engaged in a large-scale, high-attrition war in Ukraine, its economy placed on a war footing, and its defence-industrial base navigating the constraints of international sanctions.

While Zapad 2021 was characterised by its conspicuous mass and tempo, showcasing a massive conventional-war scenario that was later seen as a prelude to the early stages of the initial invasion of Ukraine, Zapad 2025 was markedly different. Open-sources suggests it was more compact, distributed across multiple training areas, and consciously designed to remain below key transparency thresholds. This scaled-down approach is not an abandonment of Russia's IPW doctrine, but a tactical adaptation to its inability to pursue the same doctrine at the scale of Zapad 2021, while simultaneously sustaining a protracted war. This reality forces a deeper analysis of the exercise's efficiency and purpose, moving beyond a simple headcount of troops to a focus on what Russia chose to rehearse or hide under wartime conditions.

Hence, Zapad 2025 served as a strategic testing, reflecting the Kremlin's response to its constraints. The exercise’s low-visibility, modular design allowed Russia to maximize its political and military utility while minimising resource consumption. It was a calculated effort to train high-leverage capabilities, such as integrated air and missile defence (IAMD) and long-range fires, without expending the vast quantities of personnel and materiel that are critically needed on the front lines. This approach underscores a profound feedback loop between the battlefield, the Russian defence establishment, and the state's economic capacity, where Zapad is no longer a theoretical exercise but a practical field laboratory for a nation at war.

The Political Logic of a Wartime Exercise

For both Moscow and Minsk, Zapad 2025 was as much a political instrument as a military rehearsal. The political leadership in the Kremlin and the General Staff orchestrated the exercise to project specific messages to both domestic and international audiences, all while managing the significant resource constraints imposed by the war. The strategic messaging surrounding Zapad 2025 was deliberately calibrated. Public narratives emphasised a defensive posture against external ‘aggression’ and reinforced the consolidation of the Union State between Russia and Belarus. This was linked to parallel Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) drills in Belarus, and the broader narrative was used to frame Western aid to Ukraine interpreted as a form of escalation. The choreography of the exercise was designed to deter potential adversaries and normalise elevated military mobilisation at home, meanwhile keeping headline numbers below the OSCE Vienna Document thresholds for mandatory observation. Russia sought to signal resolve without ceding the advantage of opacity.

The alliance with Belarus was a central feature of the exercise. Zapad has long been the ‘premier political-military theatre’ for demonstrating alliance management with Belarus. The Union-State framework provides a crucial political cover for regular joint military activity, and Zapad 2025 was no exception. Open reporting indicated that significant training activities were relocated eastward, deeper into Belarus. This geographical complicated observation for NATO and eased the logistics and security requirements for high-value assets and capabilities. The Russo-Belarusian interface also practiced rapid authority transfers for air defence and logistics, highlighting Belarus’s function as a ‘staging area and AD extension’ for Russia.

The exercise operated under a distinct nuclear shadow. While some sources noted a tempered nuclear rhetoric surrounding Union-State activities, Belarusian officials explicitly signalled that planning for the exercise would include scenarios for nuclear employment, with a specific focus on tactical options. The apparent contrast between a tempered narrative and the explicit mention of nuclear drills is a deliberate contrasting strategy. With Belarus vocalising the chance of tactical nuclear use, Russia was able to maintain a low-cost, high-impact deterrent message without directly rehearsing such a scenario itself, thus avoiding the full weight of international condemnation that would accompany such a move. The entire political-military event demonstrated that the Kremlin's foreign policy is now inseparable from its military and economic realities, with every action meticulously calculated to project strength and stability on a shoestring budget.

Military Design and Constraints

Zapad 2025’s military design was a direct reflection of Russia’s battlefield experience in Ukraine, serving as a feedback loop for adapting doctrine and operational art. The official participant numbers were kept below the OSCE Vienna Document thresholds for mandatory observation, which require observation for exercises with 13,000 or more personnel. This is a long-standing practice that Russia has employed since at least Zapad 2013, allowing it to under-report total numbers and modularise parallel events to avoid mandatory verification while still training at a strategic scale. The decision to reduce the parameters was also presented by Belarusian officials as a de-escalatory step to reduce tensions with neighbouring states.

The central doctrinal focus was the Initial Period of War (IPW), which aims to disorganise an adversary through rapid deep strikes against operational command and control (C2), airbases, IAMD nodes, logistics hubs, and rail chokepoints. The exercise stressed ISR-fires integration, long-range precision strikes (including from standoff bombers), and counter-ISR/electronic warfare operations. The exercise's focus on these elements is a direct consequence of the war in Ukraine and the lessons Russia has been forced to learn. Hence, the design of Zapad 2025 explicitly incorporated the realities of a modern, high-intensity conflict. Russia rehearsed tactics that compensate for weaknesses exposed in Ukraine, such as the use of glide bombs to overcome limited air superiority. It also practiced deploying dense ground-based air defence (GBAD) and electronic warfare to counter the enemy’s ISR capabilities, a persistent problem encountered on the front lines. The exercise also addressed enduring vulnerabilities in the Russian military, including its centralised, staff-centric C2 system, which limits initiative in fluid combat conditions, and its high-casualty costs for massed-fires and incremental assaults.

Experts note that the Russian military command has been forced to redeploy ‘elite’ naval infantry and airborne (VDV) forces from northern Sumy and Kherson to the Donetsk Oblast, which has become the primary focus of the fall 2025 offensive. A document also notes that elements of the 98th VDV Division were participating in CSTO exercises in Belarus, despite they have been observed operating near Chasiv Yar and Bakhmut in Ukraine since at least April 2023. This suggests that Russia is either cycling exhausted units through the exercise or using forces with no immediate operational utility in Ukraine, both of which point to a profound mass deficit. The fact that the exercise focused on staff processes and high-tech capabilities rather than large-scale troop manoeuvres is a direct outcome of this constraint.

The War Economy and Industrial Underpinnings

The design and execution of Zapad 2025 were profoundly shaped by the economic and industrial realities of a state at war. International sanctions and export controls have pushed the Russian economy onto a partial war-economy, with a significant portion of its national income and federal budget now dedicated to defence. Thus, the Russian economy faces critical long-term structural challenges that directly influence the military’s capabilities and training. The economic information from the provided documents reveals a paradox of resilience.

The Russian economy's recent growth is almost entirely attributable to the surge in war production, rather than organic growth in other sectors. This militarisation of the economy, sustained by deficit spending and the depletion of the National Welfare Fund, is fiscally unsustainable in the long-term. The defence sector'sgrowing share of the national income has entrenched interests that favour high military spending despite the macroeconomic costs, making a low-visibility, modular, and cost-controlled exercise like Zapad 2025 particularly attractive. The reduced scale and constrained nature of the exercises are tangible, public indicators of the real, albeit not decisive, impact of sanctions and the economic cost of the war, a reality that the façade of military parades and strategic exercises cannot fully conceal.

As a result, Zapad 2025 is a critical data point for NATO and its partners, as it provides a clear picture of how Russia's military, political, and economic systems are adapting to a protracted war, limited industrial production and low budget. Russia's IPW playbook remains, but it is now being refined to be more effective and efficient under real-world constraints. The most critical challenge identified is a prolonged IAMD duel to degrade a defender's strike complex, an element that Russia has prioritised in its wartime training. Based on the analysis, a multifaceted response from NATO is required.

Assessments and Strategic Considerations of Zapad 2025

NATO must be prepared to exploit predictable key vulnerabilities and improve several areas. Apparently, Russian IPW strategy relies on early deep strikes against critical infrastructure, C2 nodes, airbases, and logistics hubs. Hence, NATO and Ukraine must prioritise hardening these nodes to make them more resilient to attack. Furthermore, accelerating the integration of air and missile defence and counter-ISR capabilities is the centre of gravity for a contemporary defensive strategy against Russia's IPW playbook. The exercise's focus on GBAD and EW indicates that Russia sees these as its most effective tools for achieving decision on favourable terms, necessitating that NATO's defensive posture is centred on a robust and redundant counter-IAMD complex.

Zapad 2025's economic underpinnings reveals that sanctions have forced Russia to adapt and have created long-term vulnerabilities. Sanctions are working and should be enhanced and aggressively enforced. The focus must be on targeting the specific components critical to Russia's defence industry, such as semiconductors, guidance kits, precision machine tools, and their freight corridors. This requires a concerted international effort to disrupt Russia's complex circumvention networks, as highlighted by Sanctions 2.0 proposal.

Finally, the exercise was showcased Russian narrative and propaganda. A key objective for NATO is to deny Moscow escalation dominance without mirroring its rhetoric. This can be achieved by combining public disclosure of Russia's under-reported exercise activities with a calibrated Allied posture. Publicly highlighting the discrepancies between Russia's claims and its actual capabilities, and demonstrating Alliance cohesion through well-publicised parallel exercises and forward sustainment drills, can effectively counter Russian narratives and introduce uncertainty for Russian planners.

The central takeaway is that Russia's IPW playbook is not static. The focus on long-range fires, an IAMD duel, and electronic and cognitive shaping points to a deliberate effort to build a military that can overwhelm a defender's strike complex and then exploit opportunities on the ground. The war has exposed systemic vulnerabilities including logistical fragilities, command brittleness, and an economy on an unsustainable, militarised footing. These limitations are being addressed, however imperfectly, through training and industrial adaptation.

For NATO, Zapad 2025 underscores a fundamental requirement for a nuanced threat assessment. The Alliance must not be misled by the down-scaled optics of the exercise. Instead, it must recognise that the exercise's focus on high-end capabilities represents a persistent, long-term threat. NATO's posture should not be a mirror image of Russia’s, but rather a robust, cohesive, and intelligent response that targets Russia’s demonstrated weaknesses, strengthens its own key vulnerabilities, and denies the Kremlin the political and strategic victories it seeks through coercive signalling. The exercise is a stark reminder that while the war in Ukraine has imposed significant costs on Russia, it has also created a more adapted, albeit constrained, military that remains intent on achieving its strategic objectives.

© Fabrizio Minniti and Giangiuseppe Pili, 2025, published by RUSI with permission of the authors.

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